Most Notorious Science Scandals Of 2015

There were an alarming number of science scandals in 2015, from fabricated data to sexual harassment. Here are our picks for the worst of the worst -- including that time the Medical Journal of Australia imploded.

1. A Grad Student Faked Data In an Important Gay Marriage Study

In late 2014, a paper published in Science, titled "When contact changes minds: An experiment on transmission of support for gay equality," made headlines around the world by showing that gay political canvassers, when conversing face-to-face with constituents for as little as 20 minutes, could influence the vote in favour of same-sex marriage. The study claimed that the effect lasted about a year, and that the favourable opinion had a tendency to spread within the voter's household.

Accusations that something was amiss emerged after a team of researchers from UC Berkeley and Yale could not reproduce the results. In their ensuing report, the authors highlighted eight statistical irregularities, saying the data could not have been "collected as described." Later, the study's lead author, Donald Green from Columbia University, issued a formal retraction of the paper, but not before questioning his co-author, Michael LaCour, a grad assistant from UCLA. (Image credit: Davidlud/CC)

2. The American Psychological Association Colluded With the U.S. Government in Justifying Torture

The APA secretly coordinated with officials from the CIA, White House and the Department of Defence to create an APA ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the CIA torture program.

In response, the APA said there "has never been any coordination between APA and the Bush administration on how APA responded to the controversies about the role of psychologists in the interrogations program."

The hosts of the luncheon, the Korean Federation of Women's Science and Technology, called for an apology, and Hunt obliged. His remarks also prompted a flurry of hilariously sarcastic responses, most with the hashtag #DistractinglySexy, showing women scientists at work. Hunt eventually resigned from his post as honorary professor at University College London's Faculty of Life Sciences.

But then an ugly backlash followed in defence of Hunt, claiming he had been unfairly targeted by an overly zealous "twitter mob." That backlash continued months after most people had forgotten about the incident and moved on. Hunt is now reportedly leaving the UK to move to Japan with his wife, immunologist Mary Collins, who accepted a five-year post at a Japanese institution. (Image credit: Universitat Basel)

7. The Medical Journal of Australia Imploded

Earlier this year, Stephen Leeder, the editor of The Medical Journal of Australia, raised concerns about his company's decision to outsource production to Elsevier. His bosses did not take kindly to his objections, and he was promptly fired. In a dramatic show of support, all but one member of the 20-person advisory committee stepped down in protest. Leeder and various committee members had expressed concerns over Elsevier's controversial track record, citing, for example, the company's previous publication of fake medical journals that had been funded by pharmaceutical companies. (Photo of AMJ president Brian Owler: Andrew Meares)

9. A High-Profile Researcher Fabricated Scientific Results Published in Major Journals

Heart researcher Anna Ahimastos admitted to making up some of the data in a study investigating whether two well-known blood pressure drugs could help treat people with heart disease. Adam Marcus of Retraction Watch told Gizmodo that this case didn't make it to a lot of people's radars, but it should have, given that it involved retractions for fake data published in the world's two leading medical journals. (Image credit: ABC News)

"Publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA is a bit like earning degrees from Harvard and Princeton -- it's hard to have more prestigious lines on your resume," said Marcus. "Ahimastos had to retract articles in the NEJM and JAMA -- two from there, in fact -- for fabricating patient records. She also lost at least six other publications, and her job at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, in Melbourne, Australia, in the affair."

10. A British Paper Suggested an All-Female Archaeology Team Was a "Publicity Stunt"

The fact that Berger used women cavers to retrieve Naledi bones -- on the grounds that they were the only ones small enough to get into the chamber -- has only irked his critics even more. One said: "There are many male cavers who could get in there, but that would have spoiled the publicity stunt."

Needless to say, there was a considerable backlash from many members of the scientific community who condemned McKie's remarks, while affirming the work performed by the women excavators. (Image credit: Lee Berger/Twitter)

11. A Major Publisher Retracted 43 Papers

UK-based BioMed Central, the publisher of over 270 peer-reviewed journals, pulled 43 papers earlier this year on account of "fabricated" peer reviews. As the Washington Postreported:

A partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China. But Jigisha Patel, associate editorial director for research integrity at BioMed Central, said it's not "a China problem. We get a lot of robust research of China. We see this as a broader problem of how scientists are judged."

Meanwhile, the Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors,issued a statementsuggesting a much broader potential problem. The committee, it said, "has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers."

The journals are now reviewing manuscripts to figure out just how many need to be retracted.